Heh. Changed my mind. This originally said "No BG2:EE compatibility". But since the only thing messing wiith BG2:EE compatibility was traification to throw dialogue lines into utf8 instead of cp1252, it should be now compatible. Not tested on a BG2:EE install, but compatible. HINT: need someone to toss a few mods on and see if I have messed up the iconvert call or not reloaded .tra or something stupid.

If a BG2:EE modder wants to test this - go for it, please

DO NOT INSTALL CROSSMOD BANTER PACK v14 ON BG2EE, v15 test and v15 complete is traified and can (supposedly) handle HANDLE_CHARSET.

Installing v14 with cp1252 encoded strings into BG:EE/BG2:EE has been known to truncate lines and/or cause crashes.

Current Content

This is still a hardcoded .d mod and only available in English (American).

EDIT: test version is traified - the files for translation are in crossmodbg2/tra/english

And we will either have to rename files for AUTO_TRA or manually declare; design decisions long long ago and far far away have identical filenames, in two separate sets off sub-branches one for SoA, one for ToB. If someone starts messing with this before I do, we probably want to add soa_ and tob_ to the front of files, so that we can try to auto_tra/%s. Done.

I have the following things either sent to the test branch or in-progress:

Okay, silly question here: my banters for Xan, Coran, Tiax and so on are regular banters, in English, without any weird symbols, sometimes with audio files. I'd say most of the banters are - with the exception of some exotic stuff like Amber's interjections. There are no journal entries; practically, it's "average mod content", like Branwen NPC, and she's not traified but BG2EE-compatible. Uh, I think.

So - would it be possible to install just the boring banter stuff for BG2EE? (With excluding all the components that might have weird symbols or interjections).

I will research again, but as far as I can tell, HANDLE_AUDIO needs pathing to work correctly (its default expects one folder and all audio and sox/oggdec there; bgee variant use .ogg format renamed to .wav - I bypass the need for all this by using wavc format, so I can copy directly to any i.e. game with no exterior calls).So it means some fiddling about to work.

Wait a sec...

Looking again through the files, it look like very few folks used audio, so it might be possible to roll it up with little fuss after all from an audio standpoint. Instead of updating to H_A, it might be possible to just copy the existing .ogg and rename them for bg2ee -

ACTION_IF GAME_IS ~bg2ee eet~ THEN BEGIN

COPY ~verylongpathname/mywav.ogg~ ~override/mywav.wav~

END

ACTION_IF GAME_IS ~soa tob bgt~ THEN BEGIN

<<do the current actions for sound on non-bgee>>

END

I will recheck this as well, but I believe HANDLE_CHARSET is designed to work with just .tra files. Perhaps the workaround is that just the .d files are translated to utf8 - I think I tried doing that last year... if that is the case, then it is only... err.. all those subfolders... heh. So either way, dealing with converting the .d or traifying the mod and then converting will take more time.

Not sure how comfortable I am about only converting and installing the easy stuff and leaving the harder stuff behind.

( github. getting folks to collaborate through sending fixes through github will speed up things immensely. folks can look at the code, fork a repository, make changes, download and test those changes on their own installs, then make changes, then request a merge with the original branch. Plus, everyone sees everything, so full transparency. )

Edited by cmorgan, 15 July 2015 - 04:51 AM.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. - Douglas Adams

Maybe the requirement for inclusion should be extended to "coded in .d\tra pair and tested". Maybe make the required Main mod folder Name in the components package tp2 some variable, e.g. %cmbmainmod%\ajantisxan\ so the maintainer of cmbp would only need to integrate the component's folder into cmbp and copy the tp2 contents over for it to work. If it makes sense.

It's just my opinion, but I think that "having some version of crossmod in English that works for BG2 and ideally for BG2EE, too" is vastly more important than having any components traified and/or translated. I'm happy for my components to be untranslated forever if it only means people would be able to download them off G3 and finally play them, maybe even on BG2EE.

Moongaze entries may need updating so people can find the author's current persona. Were these integrated into Mod for the Wicked?

Deathsangel's Kido and Moongaze's Kari the Kobold, etc. <- same person, different persona

@Jastey - makes sense. To deal with future stuff *not* pushed as tested content on github (which would already be in that format), we are going to have to update the FAQ and be clear about the submissions; from this point forward, we will probably need them traified before testing, then tested, then packaged and submitted the way Kulyok and Rhaella did.

Point taken on the .d =/= utf8 thing - I looked up my earlier stuff.

If things are done this way, updating the mod as a whole becomes much easier. As in, it might actually get done.

@Kulyok - Understood. That's why I want to skip the BG2EE and .tra conversion for this iteration. Hopefully when folks see a new stable one published some kind-hearted BG2:EE modder will assist in .tra and HANDLE_CHARSET via git. I'd rather get the darned thing out with this content for *just* BG2/BGT, and then deal internationalization and modernization.

Edited by cmorgan, 15 July 2015 - 11:26 AM.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. - Douglas Adams

And a test version is available <removed> an old skool rar file, no github stuff, with specific comments and readme warnings that this is a test package and not for distribution - just a regular distro you can unpack and run.

Warning - it has not been test installed ANYWHERE there will probably be typos. Hence the "test". If you are an intrepid explorer and don't mind a few minutes of work, roll it out over a BG2 install that has combinations of mods like Amber, Gavin, Ajantis, Xan, and Adrian. Hell - run it out of all of the mods (covered by crossmod) you possibly can.

DO NOT PUT THIS OVER GENERALIZED BIFFING OR ON A MEGA INSTALL UNLESS YOU ARE AN EXPERIENCED MODDER. YES I AM YELLING. It should work fine, but if you are a new player and have spent a week or two building a Mega Install, you probably do not want to do all that over again if something happens to go wrong.

The idea is to test install it and see if it throws weidu errors. Bonus if you get into the game, Clua in two of the NPCs the docs say have banters, and press Ctr-I until the banters fire.

Experienced folks can throw the kitchen sink at it, please, especially if someone has a BGT and/or Mega install they don't mind scrapping; weidu logs of success would be cool. I may fiddle about with a custom install.log since .bat installer Mega folks have to do some "this component then that component" that wipes out the .DEBUG and WeiDU.log.

Post any cruft/errors/strangeness right here so I can investigate and fix, please. If it works in general (and it should, as many people have downloaded the contents and applied them themselves), then I will poke about with some of the other submissions, and try to figure out how we are going to restructure to take advantage of Mike1071's "packaging install .bat". Right now having all these different .oggs in all those different places is not very "package me automatically" friendly. Not a big deal, but I'd like to be able to use the tools as folks put time into creating them...

side note - Lollorian, my dear friend - and all you cool cats building mega installers and batch files and specialized programs. - don't let any Mega folks link to this at all. And please don't let them (especially BWP) link to the test branch on GtiHub. The last thing we want to do is start folks downloading something that may be cleaned up and out next week, and may have install bugs to sort out )

edit>: OK, I lied.

I grabbed a few mods and threw them on BG2 and did a quick check; I forgot how fun it was writing Ninde<>Aran crossmod with Rhaella! And I forgot how much more writing/reading space standard BG2 has over BG2EE. I am going to have to post a suggested text size for BG2:EE users. Anyways... off the topic...

quick check of the following on BG2 shows all is in order in this particular combination. Have to add Ajantis to see what really happens when two mods have installed crossmod and we install the same content over it.

Regarding the packaging utility, it doesn't care where your .ogg files are, just the location of oggdec and sox (if they are used). If you are going to use ogg files, keeping them in one place would mean you would only need one HANDLE_AUDIO call.

Cool - under the current structure, though, we need to path in to the .ogg. Not as many of these as I thought.

Originally, I thought *every* component shipped with custom sound files, but it looks like only Kulyok's, and then not all of hers. This should be doable and testable by week's end (though not for me tomorrow - family time )

If you have suggestions, I'm open to anything that decreases complexity. The "ogg renamed with a wav extension" I have confirmed working on a bg2ee install with another mod. That's what HANDLE_AUDIO will do on all the ee variants, right?

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. - Douglas Adams

Thanks, Mike1072 - very simple, does away with the .bat, and is easy to implement. MUCH easier than I thought it would be to convert!

Waiting on two or three rechecks/emails for submitted content, so I went ahead and recoded for HANDLE_AUDIO and the soa_ tob_ file changes. Everything is working very well.

Found some odd minor things that needed rechecking/fixing, so tucked into it. Going line by line to reconfirm correct installation.

And since the way batch installs work is separate components being placed in as separate installs (thus wiping out the weidu.log information as the default setup-mymod does not include --append and we really really don't want it to) I've set up a by-component debug file with more detailed information.

Still cleaning that up before I set it up as a public test package and beg some Mega Mod folks to try to break it.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. - Douglas Adams